Award-winning author on everything from chewing gum to aging disgracefully

Monthly Archives: November 2012

Every year we’re stunned by how quickly twelve months has passed and this year is no exception. 2012 passed so quickly, it’s as if those Christmas decorations on Orchard Road never came down.For the first few months of this year, I thought I was in control of time. I was working hard on my next novel, Being Anti-Social (which was published in May), and launching various initiatives for the Association of Independent Authors. And although I was extremely busy, time was not my enemy. Then something happened. We went to Australia late April to catch up with family and visit our favourite place, Noosa (we first went there in 1983 for our honeymoon).Just a few weeks after our return, visitors arrived. When they left, other visitors arrived then three days after their departure we were on our way to South Africa to catch up with our good friends and long-standing travel companions, Donna and Terry from Pittsburgh.

We had an awesome time in Africa (South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Zambia) made even more awesome as we were able to meet up with our friends, David and David who we met on a tour of Central Europe in 2008 (they live in Cape Town). It’s so incredible to meet people on your travels, to stay in touch for years then finally see them again.

It took the longest while to settle again after holidays and of course we were busy with the usual September birthday celebrations: Steve’s birthday, mine five days later and our anniversary three days after that. It’s a big and busy week, and of course this year I celebrated a milestone birthday (50).

I don’t know what happened to October and November – they just disappeared, and so now here we are listening to Oh Come All Ye Faithful and assessing Christmas Day lunch options.

It seems every year goes faster than the one before, and certainly so much faster than a year in the life of a ten-year-old. There are a few reasons for this phenomenon:

1. Our early years are full of first-time events: first day of school, first car, first overseas holiday, first romance, first job etc. We tend to make more detailed and lasting memories of them. And when we repeat the event, year after year, it is less likely to make a unique or lasting impression.

I don’t like this explanation because I think that the more first events in your life, the faster the year would go, not slower.

2. Then there is the ‘ratio’ explanation ie for a ten-year-old, a year is a tenth of his lifetime and seems to be never-ending, but to a sixty-year-old, a year is a sixtieth of his lifetime and therefore seems to be shorter than that of the five-year-old.

This seems logical to me.

3. Finally, time goes faster when you’re older because you have more to do; more responsibility and obligation and perhaps less time for those ‘firsts’. Perhaps we’re also in more of a hurry to get started on that Bucket List or achieve life’s goals before it is too late – there’s an urgency, and when time is critical there seems less of it.

Again, this seems logical.

What do you think? Do you find time speeding up as you age, and if so, why do you think this happens? Is it real or imagined?